The ECB’s Balance Sheet Is Literally a Work of Fiction

As noted in numerous articles, the entire European banking and corporate system is over-burdened with debt.

Jagadeesh Gokhale of the Cato Institute puts the situation as the following, “The average EU country would need to have more than four times (434 percent) its current annual gross domestic product (GDP) in the bank today, earning interest at the government’s borrowing rate, in order to fund current policies indefinitely.”

Put another way, for Europe’s Government to fund all the entitlements they have, they would need an amount equal to 400% of GDP to be sitting in the bank collecting interest.

Virtually NO European country is running a surplus, let alone has an amount equal to 100% of GDP let alone 400% of GDP sitting around.

How come no one is openly admitting this?

The reason none of this shows up is because Europe’s accounting for unfunded liabilities as well as its accounting for banking liabilities. As noted by Mark Grant, the ECB even ADMITS that it doesn’t record most of the garbage it owns:

“Recognition of assets and liabilities

An asset or liability is only recognized in the Balance Sheet when it is probable that any associated future economic benefit will flow to or from the ECB, substantially all of the associated risks and rewards have been transferred to the ECB, and the cost or value of the asset or the amount of the obligation can be measured reliably.”

So the ECB has openly admitted: “we don’t actually count something as an asset or liability unless we believe it should be.”

In other words, the ECB’s balance sheet, which backs up the entire EU banking system it essentially a work of fiction. Unless the ECB officials feel like admitting something is an asset or liability, it doesn’t exist.

At this point, no sane person could possibly invest in Europe. And given that EU bureaucrats are now proposing STEALING depositors savings, I can’t think why anyone would have a bank account there either.

At the end of the day, this is all you need to know about Europe’s Crisis:

1) The European Banking system is over $46 trillion in size (nearly 3X total EU GDP).

2) This banking system is officially leveraged at 26 to 1. Realistically it’s likely closer to 50 to 1.

3) The ECB’s balance sheet is entirely made up based on how the ECB feels like valuing what it owns (how’d that concept work out for Wall Street banks in 2008?)

4) Over a quarter of the ECB’s balance sheet is PIIGS debt which the ECB will dump any and all losses from onto national Central Banks (read: Germany).

So we’re talking about a banking system that is nearly four times that of the US ($46 trillion vs. $12 trillion) with at least twice the amount of leverage (26 to 1 for the EU vs. 13 to 1 for the US), and a Central Bank that has stuffed its balance sheet with loads of garbage debts, giving it a leverage level of 36 to 1…

And all of this is occurring in a region of 17 different countries none of which have a great history of getting along… at a time when old political tensions are rapidly heating up.

To be clear, the Fed, indeed, Global Central Banks in general, have never had to deal with a problem the size of the coming EU’s Banking Crisis. There are already signs that bank runs are in progress in the PIIGS.

Thus, the World’s Central Banks cannot possibly hope to contain the coming disaster. They literally have one of two choices:

1) Monetize everything (hyperinflation)

2) Allow the defaults and collapse to happen (mega-deflation)

If they opt for #1, Germany will leave the Euro. End of story. They’ve already experienced Weimar and will not tolerate aggressive monetization.

So even the initial impact of a massive coordinated effort to monetize debt would be rendered moot as the Euro currency would enter a free-fall, forcing the US dollar sharply higher which in turn would trigger a 2008 type event at the minimum.

In simple terms, this time around, when Europe goes down (and it will) it’s going to be bigger than anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes. And this time around, the world Central Banks are already leveraged to the hilt having spent virtually all of their dry powder propping up the markets for the last four years.

Given what is happening in Europe right now, we wanted to alert investors to a major development we’ve noticed in the markets.

The markets look to be setting up for the next Crisis. Indeed, multiple metrics we track are flashing RED ALERT.